Finding friends

First, a huge thank you to @jennifert for making a welcoming space to find each other. If you’re newly arrived, please head straight to the Introductions and Friend Requests thread. Below, i’ll walk you through the process of sending and responding to friend requests, but Jennifer’s thread is a great place to introduce yourself and find people you’d like to befriend.

To send a friend request:

First, locate a friendly-looking soul. You can do this in the Introductions thread (link above), or by spotting them lurking about the website, perhaps commenting on a post or replying to a forum thread.

When you find someone you’d like to befriend (or an old friend you’d like to connect with here officially), click their profile picture or their name to go to their profile.

In their profile, right next to their photo and under their Name and Username, you’ll see two buttons: “Add Friend” and “Private Message.” If you want to send them a friend request, click “Add Friend.” (More on Private Messaging in another tutorial.)

When you hit that “Add Friend” button, it’ll change to “Cancel Friend Request.” Click that if you sent the request by accident or get cold feet. 🙂 Otherwise, wait until they respond to your request. You’ll get a notification when they do.

If you go to your own profile (just click your name in the top left of the screen) and then click “Friends,” it’ll open up this screen where you can see everyone you’re friends with. Click Requests to see your friend requests. (You’ll also get notifications when someone requests your friendship, and you can accept or decline right from the notification.) Take a look—there’s also a View All Members tab! Yes! You really can just scroll through every single registered member and send friend requests right from that tab. (You can also cancel friendships there, but that is too sad a thing to talk about in this happy part of the story. <–Bonus points for anyone who catches this reference.)

Here’s what you’ll see in the aforementioned View All Members tab. There’s a search bar—Yay!—and buttons to manage friendships. If you click “My Friends,” it does just what you would expect—narrows down the list of registered members to only the people you’ve already confirmed friendships with.

For your edification i have made friends with myself. 🙂 This is what a friend request looks like. Remember the Requests tab, found in your profile under Friends? Here it is again. The first request has already been accepted. The second one still needs a response. (It was a tough decision, let me tell you. i know that girl and she can be a little weird. But in the end i decided to accept.)